The Modernists
Bam, wham!
Clangor of cymbals and shriek of a fife,
That stabs like a knife.
Zam, slam!
Bang on the tambourine, beat on the drums,
Symphony comes!
Greet her with tom-toms while savages dance,
Let any discord the riot enhance,
Down with all melody, harmony, poise,
Give us more noise!
Tonal inebriates, drunken with sound,
Pound, brothers, pound!
Furiously, frenziedly, round and around
Whirls the mad medley of ear splitting notes,
Like the yelling of demons with flame blackened throats.
Music is stricken, is dying, ’tis said,
Over her head,
Set all the boiler works off on a spree!
Jazz and more jazz in a mad jamboree,
Music is dead!
But still in the morning the song sparrow sings
And blithely she wings,
And from her gay throat a sweet melody springs,
Old as the Pyramids, new as the dawn,
Music will live when this madness has gone.
Blah, blurb!
Pronoun and verb.
For poetry give us a barbaric yawp
Slop, Stop!
The stuff that some long haired Bohemian raves
Would make Keats and Tennyson turn in their graves
Miscalled free verse,
And trash that is worse.
Nothing too banal or trite or absurd,
Such is the artistic triumph preferred,
To melodies sung
When old Homer was young.
Out with the rhyming brook, limpid and pure,
Open a sewer!
Let the nymph Poesy cover her face,
Downcast and blushing at such a disgrace.
Garbage of words and cesspool of thought
Columns and pages of rubbish and rot,
Only a blot!
This is not Poesy spawned in the mire,
High on Olympus she still sounds her lyre
With the immortals. Her rapt, vibrant fire
Blasts like a flame
All the abortions brought forth in her name.
Smear, daub!
Plaster on canvas an unsightly gob
Yellow and scarlet and purple and pink,
Looks like a mess that has spilled in the sink.
But call it a sunset o’er Harlem, in truth
Or a beautiful woman enamoured with youth.
Just a name, any name that you think of will do,
And if you insert a poor outline or two,
Be sure that you violate all the known rules.
The masters were fools!
For painting is only a sleep walker’s trance.
Walpurgis is with us so on with the dance!
For the forms that great Phidias carved out of stone
Misshapen monstrosities, muscle and bone
Now simper and leer,
At vapid admirers who openly jeer
At beauty of tinting or outline or form
And foment a storm,
Of sickly approval at each newest fright
That clutters our galleries, angers our sight.
For art is a blight!
O that some genius great hearted and sane
Would banish such trash of a disordered brain!
For beauty will ever be noble and fine
And speaking through music or color or line
Her voice is divine!